A CRACK in the American policy of trying to hold Communist China virtually in quarantine showed up for the first time, July 18, when Secretary of State Dulles offered to validate the passports of a limited number of American newsmen for travel in China for a limited period. The press and radio-television representatives who conferred with the Secretary did not accept or reject his offer, though they made it plain that they were reluctant to agree to the proposed limits on news coverage. Whether or not American correspondents actually go to Red China, the offer to authorize the travel represented a considerable backdown. The State Department had previously refused to validate any passport for that purpose and had threatened punitive action against three newsmen who went to China last winter without authorization.

In another sector of China policy the United States recently lost the support of its allies. European exporting nations, unlike this country, never had completely embargoed shipments to mainland China, but they had banned a special list of strategic goods. Now France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and others in Europe, and Japan in the Far East, have decided to put no greater restrictions on their trade with China than on their trade with countries of the Soviet bloc. The United States, meanwhile, sticks to its total embargo.

Secretary Dulles said in San Francisco, June 28, that it was still the policy of this country to abstain from any act which would “encourage the [Chinese] Communist regime morally, politically, or materially.” The United States waited 16 years to recognize the Russian Communist regime. The Reds have been in control of all China for only eight years. No drastic change of policy toward Peiping is imminent in Washington, but signs are beginning to appear that the facts of international life and the realities of power situations will generate increasing pressure for adjustment and revision.